On the release of their new album, Spark, Chicago band Whitney’s Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek visit The Current to play songs and to chat with host Mac Wilson.

Ehrlich and Kakacek not only discuss the writing of what became Spark, they also share what’s important to them when searching for a place to call home, and what it’s like to be able to hold a physical copy of their records. And despite being based in Chicago, Ehrlich and Kakacek also share their special memories about Minneapolis record store Electric Fetus as well as our very on studio at The Current.

Watch and listen to the full session above, and read a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Edited for time and clarity.

Mac Wilson: Hello, my name is Mac Wilson from The Current, and I am joined in The Current studios by Whitney, Max and Julien. Good to have you in.

Julien Ehrlich: Hello.

Max Kakacek: Nice to see you.

Julien Ehrlich: Thanks for having us.

Mac Wilson: So the new record Spark is on the way this week. It's exciting. It's your first original full-length in three years. There was a covers album that you snuck in a couple of years back, too. So was that a result of having to record during the pandemic? Or was that something that you had planned beforehand? The covers album, specifically.

Julien Ehrlich: We started recording that before the pandemic hit. It was just kind of a spontaneous thing where we like all, we did like two covers, just like planning on releasing like a single; like seven inch or something. And they just like popped out so quickly and sounded so good that it was like, let's just, like, book another week at the studio and do the whole record.

Max Kakacek: It was at the end of the tour as well, so the whole live band...

Julien Ehrlich: We were tight.

Max Kakacek: Yeah, we were just kind of like, we'd pick a song in the morning, pretty much have the instrumental tracked by like 4 or 5 p.m., and then do vocals and be kind of just listening to it by 7 p.m. Done. We did that for eight days straight.

Julien Ehrlich: It was fun.

Max Kakacek: So it was kind of like, yeah, really fast paced.

Mac Wilson: So as we've been talking to musicians over the last couple of months, as we've had them in the studio, a lot of the processes like during the pandemic have been sort of similar. Like, for example, was it one of those instances when you were tracking and writing Spark, was that one of those where you were working on it separately? Or did you work, you know, in person? Or like, how did the process go for it? 

Julien Ehrlich: Max, like landed in Portland, where we were living at the time, like, two days before the world totally shut down. So we were together. And, you know, we just did what we always do.

Max Kakacek: We turn the dining room into a studio, and every place... like we saw every apartment we've had, when people come by, they're like, "It looks exactly the same as your last one." Meaning like the studio's in the dining room.

Julien Ehrlich: Yeah.

Max Kakacek: And then like, it's pretty much the main focus of the living space. So we just had everything set up in that space, and just kind of started like, you know?

Julien Ehrlich: The songs came together.

Max Kakacek: Yeah.

Julien Ehrlich: Very...

Max Kakacek: Piecing songs together, like over that whole year.

Julien Ehrlich: Yeah, it was, it was very fun, actually.

Mac Wilson: So then, as you're picking out places to live at each subsequent place, is at the first thing that you look for when you're apartment hunting or something?

Julien Ehrlich: Yeah!

Mac Wilson: Like, "Okay, this has got to be where we set this specific thing up." That is what goes into your head when you're doing that?

Julien Ehrlich: Legit! Yeah, it's like, where's the studio gonna be? This, it's always like the center of our house.

Max Kakacek: We've had one major misstep where, like, we lived in an apartment for a year with no natural light. And it was a tough one. Like, we thought that the space was perfect for setting everything up, but then we realized that it was just under, just like two buildings; like, there's a concrete porch above it, basically. And it was pitch black every day, all the time.

Mac Wilson: Which city was that in?

Max Kakacek: Chicago.

Mac Wilson: That was in Chicago.

Max Kakacek: That was like the beginning of writing Forever Turned Around.

Julien Ehrlich: We were so burnt out from touring Light Upon The Lake, too; it was just like, that was a difficult time, for many reasons.

Mac Wilson: Light Upon The Lake is a really special album to me, because every time that you put it on, it's almost something that you can put on any time. And at the same time, it totally takes you to a separate place; like, "Okay, I truly have to devote like half an hour of my life because I'm going to Light Upon The Lake right now." But I can see where when you were first touring behind that, when you're like, "Okay, this is the only batch of songs that we've got," you can really only play it that, you can sequence so songs in only so many ways. So I'm guessing that that added up over time.

Julien Ehrlich: Oh, yeah, that I mean, we were, like, we really milked it.

Max Kakacek: Yeah. And we also like, that's when we started, like, adding covers to the set. For a while, like, I mean, like we were, I wouldn't say we were desperate on tour or anything. But for a while we were playing like The Golden Girls theme song. We got like really weird with it. It was so much fun. But you know, like, I think our heads were so kind of like, wrapped in kind of like the constraint of having like only those 10 songs, that...

Julien Ehrlich: It's a short record, too.

Mac Wilson: So as you were putting together Spark, do you think of that as an album that will take people away to a specific place for half an hour of time? Or is there a sort of a different head space that you had for putting this one together?

Julien Ehrlich: Totally. I think that's always what we wind up doing when we like, remove ourselves, like take a step back from what we've made. And it's like, "Oh, this is like a place that you can take a proper journey through." And with this record, I think it's like more of like a 3D world than either of our last two, not to like diminish them at all, but we just — there was no rules in like the tools that we were using for the record, and I think that you can like you can really travel through this one.

Mac Wilson: We are here in The Current studio with Whitney. So I have a question about Chicago. You have a Wilco cover in your repertoire, "Far, Far Away," that you put out a couple of years back. So one of the big shows that everybody's watching is The Bear, and it's got the soundtrack of lots of bands, including Wilco and other Chicago bands. Have you been approached at any point to contribute any of your songs to the soundtrack of The Bear?

Julien Ehrlich: No, but we'd love to!

Max Kakacek: Yeah!

Julien Ehrlich: Honestly, we'd write a song for the second season!

Mac Wilson: It seems very much in your wheelhouse, to the point where I had to Google it ahead of time. And I'm like, "Okay: Whitney. The Bear. Let's see if there's any results." And there weren't any soundtrack results. There were some cute toys, though, called, you know, a bear called Whitney. 

Max Kakacek: Yeah, I know. 

Julien Ehrlich: I was gonna say like, I bet those search results could be varying with that one.

Mac Wilson: So we're glad to have you in today; you're playing at the Electric Fetus. And is that is that high on your list of favorite record stores around? Or have you been to the Fetus before?

Max Kakacek: Yeah, actually interesting story there, going back to one of our first shows in Minneapolis, we played the Triple Rock. And as when Light Upon The Lake was coming out, and we hadn't held Light Upon The Lake in its vinyl form yet. And we actually had the records shipped to Electric Fetus, and drove there and picked them up in our van. And that was the first time that we ever had, like, the physical copies of that record. 

Julien Ehrlich: Of any record that we made together. 

Max Kakacek: Of any record that we made was here and we picked it up from that store.

Mac Wilson: I've talked with bands before about the experience of hearing your music on the radio for the first time. But it's, you only get so many stories about bands picking up their physical media for the first time. So that's cool to hear you tell that story. 

Max Kakacek: It was kind of funny too, because we had a really... we were in, like, this old church van that we bought to tour that was like, kind of a bizarre vehicle. And we got the cassettes as well. And we put the cassette in, and the van played it back at the wrong speed. It was like a little too fast. And we were all just like, "What's going on?" We were listening to our music, just like a little, you know, it's a little higher pitched and sounded like very bizarre. But it was pretty fun.

Mac Wilson: Well, that's how Billy Joel started out, right? His first record was pressed at the wrong speed, so his voice was speeded up just that little bit. And you know, back then they were like, "Well, this is how it is; like, deal with it." So was it a playback error? Or was it actually mastered wrong?

Max Kakacek: No, it was the van. 

Julien Ehrlich: It was like, the van was… 

Max Kakacek: The van was just...

Julien Ehrlich: Crappy.

Mac Wilson: We're here with Max and Julian of Whitney, and your previous band popped into my head a couple of months ago. I'm sure you've told plenty of stories about Smith Westerns over time, but we did a promo for the weekend programs that we have here on The Current and we used "Weekend" by Smith Westerns. And I'm like, "You know, that was a nice band, I'm glad that they are able to live on in certain ways." Does that band still live on in your head in ways? Or do you firmly try to put it in the rearview mirror?

Max Kakacek: You know, I don't really make any rules about it. But it is funny. I feel like one of the last sessions we did was here at The Current. Smith Westerns. On that, I think it's 2013, it must have been, we did a session here. And we were kind of on like the end of the Soft Wheel tour, I think. And that was kind of near the end of like, all of us were feeling, you know, we'd been a band since we were 18. all of us are feeling a little, like, emotionally tired. And, you know, we're maybe thinking about the project,  moving on from the project. But yeah, I remember that session very well at that time at The Current, which is kind of funny that you brought it up because it was a specific memory here.

Julien Ehrlich: We look like total babies. I've seen, like the photo of me; like, I think I was in a drum room.

Max Kakacek: Yeah, back in the corner.

Julien Ehrlich: Looking like a child.

Mac Wilson: Well, we are here with Whitney. I have friends, we have a group chat where we talk about music all the time, and whenever Whitney comes up, we say "Oh, they're the best boys. They're just awesome guys." One friend of mine traveled across the country; you were playing in like Wyoming or Idaho or something, and I'm like...

Max Kakacek: In Boise?

Mac Wilson: I think it may have been Boise.

Max Kakacek: It probably would be Boise, yeah. 

Mac Wilson: I'm like, "That just looks like a great day." You were outside, and I'm like, "That seems like a great day to spend in the sun with Whitney," so we have really fond memories of you here as well.

Max Kakacek: Great!

Julien Ehrlich: Thank you! We love being here.

Max Kakacek: Looking to make more, you know? We got a whole new run coming up, so we'll be back. 

Mac Wilson: There you go. Whitney. The new record is Spark and they are in The Current studio.

Video Segments

00:00:00 Memory
00:02:36 Real Love
00:05:16 Valleys (My Love)
00:08:41 Interview with host Mac Wilson

Songs 1 and 2 from Whitney’s 2022 album, SPARK. Song 3 from their 2019 album, Forever Turned Around; both albums released on Secretly Canadian.

Credits

Guests – Whitney (Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich)
Host – Mac Wilson
Producer – Derrick Stevens
Camera Operators – Evan Clark, Peter Ecklund
Audio – Eric Xu Romani
Video – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Whitney – official site